Extra day leads to ticket price rise

Cheltenham organisers will consider raising ticket prices and expanding the card at future Festivals in response to lower-than-average ticket sales on the first three days of the inaugural four-day event.

Speaking on the eve of today's first Friday running of the Gold Cup, Cheltenham's managing director Edward Gillespie said that his strategy for the extended Festival would be reconsidered in the light of this year's experience.

Yesterday, effectively the extra day of the Festival, ticket sales were 54,817, a shortfall on last year's attendances in line with that seen on the opening two days. All 65,000 tickets for today's racing sold out in January.

The reduced figures are in line with Gillespie's forecasts prior to the event, but on-the-gate sales have been disappointing. Just 600 tickets have been sold from ticket booths on each of the first three days, a figure not helped by the numerous touts offering tickets at below face value.

Gillespie forecast that the Festival will still see an aggregate 20,000 increase over last year's three-day event delivering around £500,000 in additional profit, but said there were lessons to be learned.

The lower ticket sales have seen some suffer, particularly the Tote which saw turnover on Wednesday 29% down on the same day last year. A positive side-effect of the thinner crowds, however, has been to render the course less taxing on punters. The atmosphere may be less intense, a change evident yesterday as the St Patrick's Day crowd had to wait until the fifth race for an Irish winner, but at least it is now possible to place a bet and buy a drink between races, previously one of the Festival's great challenges.

Gillespie indicated he would consider making the extra space a feature of future meetings while expanding the card to keep punters and bookmakers happy. "The two themes that have come out so far are that people love this size of crowd and secondly that there is room for more races," he said. "As a result we might reconsider our strategy. We were going to aim within three years to sell 65,000 tickets on all four days of the Festival, but we might think about keeping the first three days at 55,000 and charging a little more to make sure the books balance.

"We also clearly need to work out what races we want to put in because there is room for extra racing at the end of every day. The Tote pretty much have their chin on their chest today. They were 29% down on the day yesterday, partly because crowds were 18% down and there was one less race. So we will think about moving up to seven races a day."

Gillespie said that he was content with the quality of yesterday's racing, on paper the weakest of the four days. The World Hurdle, formerly the Stayers', won by Inglis Drever, was an underwhelming feature race, but the new 2m 5f chase was a popular addition won in thrilling style by Thisthatandtother. However, he will have to counter criticism from those within racing's ranks who have already said that the quality of the Festival has been diluted.

The lack of demand for tickets has left the touts the only constituency at Cheltenham condemning outright the four-day format. "It's killing it," said one scalper clutching a handful of Club enclosure badges, available for £40, £20 less than face value.

Few racegoers made it to the ticket booths yesterday without being tempted by the touts' discounts, a situation Gillespie said he was powerless to prevent. "Without signing up to the Football Act, which requires us to personalise every ticket, there is no legislation we can invoke to prevent people touting."

Demand will be much greater today, even without Best Mate in the feature race. Last night the openness of the race following the withdrawal of the three-time champion was emphasised as bookmakers struggled to separate Beef or Salmon, Strong Flow, Celestial Gold and Kicking King at the head of the market.